Philip Roth: American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America: Bloomsbury Studies in Contemporary North American Fiction

Provides close analysis of Rothâ?Ts explorations of ethnicity, gender, the family, trauma, and American history.

Debra Shostak is Professor of English at The College of Wooster, Ohio. She is author of Philip Roth-Counterlives, Countertexts (2004).

Series Preface \ Acknowledgments \ \Introduction: Roth's America \ Part 1: American Pastoral \ Introduction to Part 1 \ 2 "What was not supposed to happen had happened and what was supposed to happen had not happened": Subverting History in American Pastoral, David Brauner \ 3. The Critique of the Pastoral, Utopia, and the American Dream in American Pastoral, Andrew Gordon \ 4. America's Haunted House: The Racial and National Uncanny in American Pastoral, Jennifer Glaser \ Part II: The Human Stain \ Introduction to Part 2 \ 5. Race, Recognition, and Responsibility in The Human Stain, Dean Franco \ 6. Possessed by the Past: History, Nostalgia, and Language in The Human Stain, Catherine Morley \ 7. "The Pointless Meaningfulness of Living": Illuminating The Human Stain through The Scarlet Letter, Gabrielle Seeley and Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky \ Part III: The Plot Against America \ Introduction to Part 3 \ 8. Just Folks Homesteading: Roth's Doubled Plots Against America ,Brett Ashley Kaplan \ 9. My Life as a Boy: The Plot Against America, Elaine M. Kauvar \ 10. Autobiography and History in The Plot Against America, or What Happened When Hitler Came to New Jersey, Timothy Parrish \ Collected Notes \ Works Cited \ Further Reading \ Notes on Contributors \ Index

"Debra Shostak's sophisticated, intellectually daring, and graceful new collection of essays on Philip Roth's later work reveals Roth's fiction in a complex and rewarding new light. Positioning Roth not simply as a contemporary American realist, but as a writer deeply aware of his place in intellectual history-one that spans nations and time-the essays in this collection reveal Roth as nothing if not deeply devoted to the epistemological crises at the heart of the 20th and 21st centuries. Each of the nuanced essays collected here thoughtfully reconsiders Roth's notoriously complex writing to emphasize his vexed representations of the status of identity, of fiction, of culture, and of human otherness during our contemporary social milieu. According to the astute scholars who contributed to this volume, Roth lays bare in his fiction since the 1990s the way ordinary people may be blindsided by the contradictions of the modern American age - the contradiction, for example, between the democratic promise, on the one hand, and institutional practices on the other hand. Collectively, these essays raise important questions about Roth's representations of American ideologies, the meaning of history, and the status of the written word, as well as the effects of these representations on the culture at large. It will inevitably change the way scholars perceive Roth's oeuvre - as well as his place in the contemporary American canon."
'Philip Roth's historical works-American Pastoral, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America-stand as perhaps the most notable in his oeuvre. In this collection, Debra Shostak shows us the significance of these novels by bringing together an insightful collection of original essays. No other study on these late-period works comes close to capturing what is sure to be seen as Roth's high point as an author. Here is where readers need to begin.'